Comments (21)

I love the convenience, but the environment never factored into my reasons for not using them often. It was the sugar and calorie count. (is that hypocritical as I sit here dreaming of a coke? Forgive me. Stomach virus)

I try to stick with water in her reusable plastic container, but how I wish I had a way to keep milk cold.

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In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

I have been doing much better in not using them. I don't have to pack lunches since I don't have any kids in school, but I am buying juice in jugs and letting him have it that way. That way I can control how much he consumes and I have to get it for him. If I have juice boxes then he can get them out of the fridge. It makes my life easier to not have juice boxes!

For drinks: I use the freezable bags from my hospital breastfeeding kit for my child's foods we want to keep cold. Besides for the desitin, it is the only thing I've used from it.

With as much water as the kids drink, I feel okay sending them in with a juice box/bag. We try to reduce a lot of our waste from the house, so a little here and there is minimal.

We aren't big on sugar and I water their juice down at home, but I am pretty happy not letting my 6 year old have soda (except for on very rare occasions - which I can count on one hand). I figure it does more good to reduce sugar to send a healthy spread and diet in general.

The expense topic is one I don't have a good answer for ;) . She doesn't take her lunch every day and it may not always be less expensive for her to do so, but we want her to eat and eat well as much as is possible.

I've never really restricted juice in our house - my kids have never been huge juice hounds, and my youngest had chronic constipation for years and juice helped. That said, I prefer my kids buy milk at school for lunch because then I know they are getting some calcium from the milk. We are not a big milk-drinking family (I don't like milk) so this is one serving of milk I know they'll drink for sure (though they usually drink milk at breakfast, too). Plus the milk provides some protein to keep them fuller for longer.

My step daughter is not a fan of pop so i dont have to worry about that. She has maybe 2 cans a month IF that.. I send 100% juice , juice boxes and then they come back in the lunch box and i recycle it.

Other than the sugar and the waste (that makes themsound much more evil than they are), Nicholas never did well with juice boxes because he always seems thirstier than what a juice box has to offer (the school has old temp regulation so they're often sweating in some classrooms).

I bought him some smaller sized reusable water bottles (14-16 Oz). We can then water down the juice and he feels more hydrated. When he buys lunch, they either give him poured soy milk or (gasp) he gets a soy milk in a juice like box.

Patch can be picky when it comes to school lunches. There are weeks where he packs at least 3 to 4 days.

He picks if he is going to get milk at school or take a juice box. The biggest thing I make sure when buying juice box is buying the ones that are 100% juice and not just a few % of juice. They are cost more, so I just stock up when they are on sale. Capri Sun has ones that 100% juice they are really good I have drank them too. Normally he does one day milk one day juice.

We do trash free lunch too. As my sister has a friend who takes the juice bags and makes them into stuff. So the juice bag home and when I mail things to my sister I mail the bags too.

I didnt take the time to get a bento box but made my own using plastic containers and silcon baking cups.

My little guy is not a big fan of juice but when we did soccer, he had a teammate who was diabetic and I found that Capri Sun had juice pouches with just a tad of juice in them (mostly water), so that was worth bringing them so everyone could feel included!